These are exciting times for Ipswich Town Football Club. The takeover by Marcus Evans has led to several big changes at the club, as it seeks to move purposefully towards promotion and beyond. However, Emma is concerned that the changes might result in people feeling they are losing touch with the club they love.
Ask any fan, and they will tell you that they long for their club to become succesful. Any fan of a lower league club will long for a benefactor to pick their club up and sweep it through the leagues, to levels they have only dreamed of. Results mean everything.
If things arent going very well at the club, fans are baying for changes at the club, either on the board, on the bench or on the pitch. Results, still, are everything.
With Ipswich being taken over by Marcus Evans, delivering money and the promise of big money signings, these are exciting times for Ipswich. Fans can now genuinely believe that, with the addition of a few real quality signings, allied to the stability of the clubs finances, the club can make a real challenge for promotion next season.
And yet, amongst all this positive change, I cant help thinking thats its not all entirely positive. Some of the changes have left me feeling as if my club is leaving its former self behind, and its a bit uncomfortable.
For all the misgivings about our spell in administration, I cant help remembering that David Sheepshanks was one of the key figures behind the clubs rennaissance in the mid 90s and early 00s. He has been the figurehead for some time, but now it feels like he has been quietly shuffled out of the door.
Our clubs board is now made up by a majority of people who, until the last few months, had probably never watched an Ipswich Town game in their life. This is quite removed from the set of predominantly Ipswich fans who sat on the previous board.
When we won promotion, our shirts were sponsored by a locally based Brewery. Next season, our shirts will be adorned with the name of the clubs owner.
The clubs shop in Bury St Edmunds is closing. Having a shop making losses is obviously not practical, but the inference has simply been that it isnt making enough money. Its a shame, it feels like the club have retreated back into their castle.
Most of the excitement surrounding the takeover has revolved around the players on the pitch- nobody is too adverse to some ruthlessness on the pitch as the squad is improved and the teams chances of success improved with it. At the end of the day, its all we really care about, its what we pay our money to see.
It was always going to be the case that there would be other changes within the club. But now that its happening, there is a realisation that, in return for an improvement in the playing squad, some of the identity that we have come to associate with our club is going to fall by the wayside.
But, to quote Jose Mourinho "You cant make an omelette without breaking some eggs".
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